Barrels

U.S. Coast Guard officials said on Friday that 46 oil drums have been plucked from the South Florida coastline this week, and 34 more are heading for shore. The containers found so far are 55-gallon drums that all appear to hold hydraulic oil, according to the state's Bureau of Emergency Response. A few have been found with small leaks. Three Coast Guard Auxiliary airplanes and a Coast Guard helicopter found more drums on Friday. The drums were discovered from Stuart to Key West, Coast Guard officials said.

Two suspects are being sought following a burglary at a restaurant in Plantation. Detectives have released surveillance video that shows a car pulling up in front of the Pickle Barrel, 1007 S. University Drive, at 5:02 a.m. Jan. 28. Two men are seen using a rock to smash the glass door and go straight to the cash register. As one man breaks it open, the other goes behind the counter and into a back office, where he grabs a cash drawer and a computer monitor, the video shows. The first burglar takes a few drinks from a cooler before both leave through the shattered front door and drive off in a dark car that has silver wheel rims with mock spokes.

BOCA RATON -- The mysterious white trash barrels that recently appeared at the end of the Palmetto Park exit ramps off Interstate 95 have disappeared. City employees went out last week to remove the cans, but the barrels were gone. The Florida Department of Transportation took the cans to a dump last week, a DOT maintenance department official said. The cans bore the words "Trash" and "Earth First!" and were placed at intersections where motorists could toss trash out their car windows into the bins.

Hours after a Palm Beach County jury in December 2012 split on a manslaughter conviction, defendant David Muringer walked out of jail a free man rather than facing up to 15 years in prison. Circuit Judge Charles Burton told the career criminal to make the most of the "gift" he received from the jury — a guilty verdict for two misdemeanors called culpable negligence and unlawful disposal of human remains in the 2010 death of his former lover. But Muringer, 43, of Boynton Beach , is again in serious trouble, and the latest charges also involve alleged violence against a woman, a 26-year-old friend named Robin Green.

Never, never, never play high-stakes poker with gangsters. Especially when they have colorful names like Harry the Hatchet. The four unlucky heroes of Lock, Stock, and 2 Smoking Barrels, a rollicking new caper comedy set in London's East End, might have known that if only they'd seen Rounders before making the fateful decision to pool all their money to back Eddie, the group's card shark. Sure enough, he promptly loses a half-million pounds to Harry in a rigged game. Harry gives the foursome a week to pay the debt.

The 21st century is only a few years away. But don't tell the crew at the Brooks Barrel Co. In an age of automation and high-tech, where robotics have replaced unskilled laborers, this barrel-making company is a hundred years behind. Antique machines, black with decades of grease and grime, cause a deafening noise in the former railroad station where about 100,000 barrels, kegs and planters are produced annually. It's a timeless trade still done by hand. Kenneth Knox, Brooks Barrel's owner, thinks his company is one of only six slack cooperages still operating in the United States.

Responding to global fears about a looming energy crisis, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed on Sunday to raise production by 800,000 barrels a day in the hope of curtailing a surge in crude oil prices and lessening the possibility of a heating fuel shortage this winter. The decision by 10 OPEC oil ministers to increase output for the third time this year was reached after only four hours of debate at an emergency session here. The world's leading consumer nations, including the United States and the European Union, as well as many energy-starved developing nations, have been pleading for a production boost to ease a supply crunch that has sent crude prices soaring to a 10-year high of $35 a barrel.

MIAMI -- Cleanup crews entered a cosmetics warehouse for the first time on Monday to begin removing barrels of chemicals damaged in a night fire that killed a veteran firefighter. Toxic fumes from smoldering chemicals, which had prevented investigators and cleanup workers from entering the building since the Friday blaze, required workers to wear special clothing when entering the building. Investigators said a preliminary examination showed the four-alarm fire at Cyclo Corp., which took 100 firefighters nearly three hours to control, was probably accidental.

HOLLYWOOD -- The owner of 36 barrels of toxic waste arranged Tuesday to have them removed from an empty lot where they had been dumped illegally last week, Fire Marshal Division Chief William Shulby said. Officials of the Hollywood Fire Department and the state Department of Environmental Regulation said they will investigate previous methods used by Robert Woodcox, president of La Strada furniture manufacturer, to dispose of toxic waste. "There very well may be some more hazardous waste in our city we don`t know about," Shulby said.

An empty bedroom in Lorna Bryan's Tamarac house looks like a merger between Publix and K-B Toys. Her son, Bert Bryan, a finance manager who lives in Jamaica but is here on a business trip, surveys the room then looks toward a large barrel standing in the living room. Bert Bryan is a novice to the Caribbean tradition of "sending barrels." His mother is an expert. "This is only the second time I'm doing this," Bert Bryan says, as he listens to her suggestions on how and where to pack certain items.

American beer drinkers know that the building blocks of all great-tasting beers include: grains, hops, yeast and water. But they probably don't know that more than 40 percent of what Americans pay for a beer goes toward a hidden ingredient: taxes. We can't find these taxes on a receipt. They are invisible and they are regressive, meaning lower- and middle-income people disproportionately and unfairly feel the pinch. Thankfully, the bipartisan Brewers Excise and Economic Relief Act of 2013, or "BEER" Act, would reduce the federal excise tax on beer drinkers and protect them from future tax hikes.

Ibet Delatorre, fighting back tears, couldn't bear to view the poster-sized photographs of the cardboard barrel used to coldly dispose of her dead sister Doris Lopez's remains more than two years ago. But Delatorre watched the defendant on trial, David Muringer, as he told a Palm Beach County jury last week he discarded the barrel inside a car parked in downtown Delray Beach - but insisted someone else choked Lopez, 48, to death. Now Delatorre says she sees lonely and frustrating days ahead, after the jurors issued a verdict that allowed Muringer, 42, to walk out of jail a free man late Monday.

David Muringer testified Friday that he lied to Delray Beach police detectives when he confessed to choking Doris Lopez to death during rough sex and then disposing her body in a thick cardboard barrel in October 2010. Muringer, accused of manslaughter, then told a Palm Beach County jury that his friend and former prison buddy, Thomas Byrd, actually killed Lopez, 48, of West Palm Beach — but he feared Byrd too much to report him. "It's more important for everybody to know what really happened," said Muringer, 42, explaining on the witness stand why he changed his story for the first time.

The body of Doris Lopez was found stuffed inside a 35-gallon cardboard barrel — wrapped in plastic and her head down at the bottom — on the back seat of a car abandoned in a Delray Beach parking lot in October 2010. "She was quite decomposed," said Palm Beach County Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Bell as testimony continued Wednesday at the trial of the man authorities say is responsible for her death: David Muringer, 42, of Lake Worth. Bell told jurors he identified Lopez, 48, of West Palm Beach, using dental records.

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HOLLYWOOD -- A man has been charged with dumping 38 barrels of toxic waste earlier this month on an empty lot near West Lake Park. George F. Collins, of the 5300 block of Southwest 19th Street, in Carver Ranches south of Hollywood, was charged with violating state hazardous-waste laws -- a third-degree felony -- and with a misdemeanor of dumping without a permit, police said. Collins dumped the barrels on a private lot at the southeast corner of Sheridan Street and North 14th Avenue, said police spokesman James Rabbitt.

Although droughts haven't been making headlines recently, Broward cities are taking steps to promote water conservation. One way cities are promoting conservation is by participating in the South Florida Water Management District's Water Savings Incentive Program, or WaterSIP, which provides grant money to cities and organizations to fund conservation efforts, said Randy Smith, a public relations specialist with the district. One method for cutting outdoor water use is by the use of rainwater collection barrels, which is currently under consideration in Pembroke Pines and Miramar.

South Florida fans of Crate & Barrel should be happy to hear they can now use the new Wedding and Gift Registry app for the iPhone to create and manage online accounts. The free app allows soon-to-be brides and grooms, for instance, to start a wedding registry from their iPhone or iPod Touch (none of those clunky store registry guns necessary) and add would-be gifts to the list by using the iOS-devices to scan bar codes directly from products at the store. The app would also be great for Bar Mitzvahs or birthday parties.

A mysterious disease is sweeping through the barrel sponges off Broward and Palm Beach counties, killing off iconic reef species that can live for hundreds of years and grow to a height of 5 feet. Divers from the environmental group Reef Rescue first encountered the diseased sponges off Boynton Beach in April, and since then more have been reported in reefs running from the Town of Palm Beach to Pompano Beach. "Barrel sponge mortality is not unusual; we see these sponges die on a regular basis, just never to this extent", said Ed Tichenor, director of Reef Rescue.